


Checkmate (the Move Back mix)

by oxfordRoulette



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-07-22 05:46:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7422250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxfordRoulette/pseuds/oxfordRoulette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is only one character who could ever compete against Terezi Pyrope, here in this new world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Checkmate (the Move Back mix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [conceptofzero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/conceptofzero/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Move On](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2459669) by [conceptofzero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/conceptofzero/pseuds/conceptofzero). 



Terezi Pyrope eats potato chips alone at the top of a hill. Shade cools her skin, the shadows of leaves rustle on her strawberry-red gingham blanket. A sun cheerfully shines down with clear beams and gaudy "THANKS FOR PLAYING" text. It's all perfect. It sucks.

She is bored and sad, has been like this forever. She feels like mold, her moods taste like tepid swampwater, all day, every day. She licks salt off her fingers and listens to the noises of the carapacian Cantown in the valley.

The carapacians came with them into their brave new world, every one of them. The Mayor and friends, the four licorice black ones with hilarious weaponry, the Black and White Queens of whom Terezi hasn't caught a single whiff of. And the Felt, they came too, barely distinguishable from the artificially healthy lime green grass, swarming around action boy and his short shorts. Defeat in honorable combat and all that. All English ever does with them is form sports teams with weird Earth games no one remembers how to play. Bor-ing! Even more boring than she is. She'd rather eat potato chips.

She wished they would form a gang. Shake things up a bit. They'd need an outside ruler to do it, though, they are all pathetic saccharine green sheep and action boy even more so. Their gang leader wouldn't be one of the players, it would have to be someone powerful, someone unique. Terezi Pyrope scans through trees of possibilities and arrives on the best conclusion: the Black Queen.

The Black Queen, exiled ruler of Derse, all around general badass and general fashionista, whose text tasted like cigarettes and body glitter. She could totally lead a group of half useless, half overpowered villains with brutal efficiency. The Felt and its Lady. Sounds dastardly! What horrors could she bring unto Cantown?

Terezi corrects herself, stretching out rusty mental reflexes and pathways. Villains, certainly, but would they begin that way? Would their origins be humble? Perhaps the Queen wouldn't begin with skullduggery and shadows. No, she would begin with politics. The Queen has Ideas, big, capitalized, grand Ideas, and with the Felt at her back there would be no one to stop her rise to power. Her quest to make a new kingdom on their new world.

With the Felt, would she make a New Derse? Bring back the tension, the drama, the bloodthirsty scheming? Would she try to take back power that was once hers? Maybe funnel her efforts into recreating the rings, or Lord English's staff!? Perhaps she was already doing that, right under Terezi's nose! That fiend! Terezi couldn't smell the injustice because her nostrils were covered in potato grease!

Or maybe not. Maybe the Queen would try something new. Take hold in a different way. Try to bring the justice she could without recreating the past, by becoming a different sort of leader, by growing and changing based on her actions in the past-- yes, yes, that's a more likely fate. People grow and change, Terezi, can't forget that.

But maybe it'd be fine for a while, maybe Terezi might even agree with her supreme and inevitable reign of Cantown (in whatever form it takes), but the Queen is deadly. She would slaughter anyone who dissents. She'd punish offenders without mercy.

And that would cause rebellion. The silly midnight gang would rise up, raid inconsequential organizations that have dealings with the Queen. They would cause plenty of vandalism! The Queen would try to eliminate them, but with half the Felt being mostly incompetent green slugs, they might cause just as much public destruction as the Midnight crew.

Cantown would descend into madness! Chaos! The streets would be filled with shadows, with night, with the thieves and baddies who were forced to pick a side in the first civil war in this new world.

Only one person could hope to face them, to cleanse the city of injustice, to wrangle both the Midnight Crew and the Felt into their own respective corners, to give them due process: Grand Legislacerator Terezi Pyrope! One night, when all hope seemed lost, she would appear silhouetted in an alleyway, moonlight with gaudy "THANKS FOR PLAYING" text glinting over her red glasses, and say to the unsuspecting gangs lurking about, "Justice has finally come to Cantown." In a cool gravely voice, of course. And her cape would be billowing. It'd be rad. She would dispense with the criminals post-haste.

The Queen would get word of this new character. Perhaps she might even recognize her. Her progeny, from long ago. And she would know that Terezi Pyrope is no normal player. Terezi Pyrope is a grand chessmaster.

They would begin to play a game. The board would be laid out. The pieces would be set. It would start small, a psychological threat here and there, to show off their abilities. Terezi would trick the Midnight Crew into burying the Queen's entire wardrobe in the forest. The Felt would break into Terezi's home and replace all her outfits with sexpot black dresses that came pre-perfumed. They would play the Midnight Crew against each other, turn by turn, the third party becoming inconsequential in Terezi's noble quest for justice.

It would descend into interrogations. Kidnapping. Terezi would steal an agent of the Queen's, tie them up in a basement, bring out the ol' Legislacerator books and overhead lamplight and finally finally participate in a good interrogation. One she always wanted, where she didn't have to feed the interrogee to a giant spider afterwards. The Queen would do the same to those who helped Terezi, unwittingly or not. Activities would be learned, schedules forged, and surprise attacks planned.

What a challenge it'd be! It'd the first thing to get Terezi's blood pumping in two sweeps. The game would last for weeks, until their resources were depleted and they both grew tired, having a tense political meeting in the Queen's grand hall. Terezi would draft a treatise, all in legal jargon, and lap up every word of all forty pages. They would go through sentence by sentence, many times over, discussing rules and regulations for the kingdom of Cantown, and Terezi would dive and swim in the ink like a warm bath. She makes the laws now. She is the law, her and the Queen.

And when, of course, they got tired of peace, one of them could disagree with a rule the other wrote and begin the subterfuge all over again.

Terezi stops daydreaming when she's tapped on the shoulder. It's Joke English.

"Want to play a fun round of baseball?" he says.

"No way, shorty shorts," she says. He harrumphs and leaves her, to go play with the Felt. Not a gang anymore, just a sports team. A really pathetic sports team.

Her daydream, which was oh-so colorful and tasty when she was imagining it, suddenly becomes mucky grayscale. Terezi isn't like that anymore. She's not concerned with justice anymore, not when her sense of right and wrong is all gone. In its place, she just has a whole lot of nothing.

She couldn't do any of that. It would never work out anyway, even if the Queen hypothetically retook the Felt. Terezi is just a very boring troll who is incorrect about everything she ever thinks. She could never stand up to the Queen. The Queen would destroy her, she's too cool. The Queen wouldn't bother with a mewing child.

Neural pathways close up, and she stops thinking. "THANKS FOR PLAYING" shines down. Terezi Pyrope eats potato chips alone at the top of a hill. 


End file.
